The Trisquel Forum / Website - a possible upgrade
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I mentioned before that I think the Trisquel forum software could be improved. I have had a look around for some free software that could be used to replace it.
I found an absolutely gorgeous forum software! I am so happy to tell you about it! It called SMF - Simple Machines Forum.
http://www.simplemachines.org/
It is free software - the licence is BSD - I hope that would be good enough. It is a fully featured piece of software and there is an active community behind it. Please spend a minute just having a look at their community page to see how good it is! I would love to hear what you think about it.
What software does the current forum use?
Does this website have a Content Management System? (Like Drupal?)
What software was used to build the current website?
I am keen on updating the forum software, and this would be a project I would be prepared to work on myself. I would need to learn quite a bit, but it could be done.
If you would like to look at the features of other possible forum software, there is a great tool called Forum Matrix here:
Anyway, just look at that forum! It has so many good features and looks gorgeous! :)
The website uses drupal.
I hate to rain on your enthusiasm but maybe you should first look at trying to help the project in smaller ways first. It is always nice when people want to help. However the website and especially the mailing lists and forums are a huge deal. I don't think it is totally appropriate for someone who is relatively new and has not contributed a lot to work on such a large project for the community. This is because what if you were not able to complete the project where would we be? What if you left the community as is normal. People come and go. Who would take over?
There is also the "don't fix it if it isn't broken principle." What is so bad about the current forum that needs to be improved by totally redoing it with a whole new set of software?
My advice is get your feet wet with the community by helping out in smaller ways first. It is just unrealistic to let someone who hasn't worked with us before to handle such a key project by themselves and that would bring such radical change to a key part of the website (especially when IMO it is working fine). Sorry but upgrading the forum I think is low priority for us right now. I don't speak for the project keep that in mind. That is just my opinion.
The Trisquel website is running Drupal. I personally like the current Trisquel forum and surely believe there are more important tasks to be done than replacing it for another forum, which is arguably "more gorgeous".
I hate to rain on your enthusiasm...
Haha! Don't worry about that!
"the mailing lists and forums are a huge deal. I don't think it is totally appropriate for someone who is relatively new and has not contributed a lot to work on such a large project for the community."
Excellent point!
"There is also the "don't fix it if it isn't broken principle."
Highly logical! But there is room for improvement, I think.
"..arguably "more gorgeous"
Haha! Weren't you sold? I love it because of its functionality, too.
More comments from people, please. Surely I am not the only person who wants to update this forum!
Well I do agree with you. "If it isn't broken don't fix it" isn't a great argument. It does hinder improvements and things like that. I agree having more functionality on the forum would be nice.
My main point is one of priority, work involved, and necessity. Firstly:
1) Is this a priority for us? We have quite a few critical bugs that need attention. We also have political stuff that needs to be taken care of. Where does upgrading the forum lay on this priority list of all the stuff we need to do.
2) How much work will be involved and who will do it? We don't even really have 1 full time paid dev. The current forum links with the mailing list so that if something is posted there it shows up here. If the other forum doesn't do that it will probably require modification (meaning coding). Can you do that? Can you maintain that code when new versions come out?
3) Do we need all these new features? What features would it offer us that would be important? As I mentioned we have limited man power. Maintaining a new system would take a lot of work. Are any of these features that critical that we really need them?
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